Abstract:
We investigate the nature and origin of comorbidity, defined as the tendency of members of marital couples to display correlated patterns of ill-health in later life. In the absence of long-term prospective data on couples, we use long-range recall data from the pan-European SHARELife survey and estimate a latent variable model of the health states of marital partners in childhood, early adulthood and late adulthood. We find strong persistence in health states and a strong comorbidity correlation, attributable almost equally to homogamy in relation to early health and common factors operating within marriage.